The Black Tower (35 page)

Hewson, thought Dalgliesh, might be looking elsewhere for consolation. He said:

“It seems out of character. I can see her making some dramatic
démarche
if only to relieve the monotony. What I can't see is her wanting to stay on at Toynton as a failed suicide, attracting the slightly pitying contempt that people feel for someone who can't even succeed in killing herself. My problem is that I find a genuine suicide attempt even less in character.”

Daniel said:

“Maybe she didn't expect to have to stay at Toynton. Maybe that was the idea, to convince her husband that she'd kill herself unless he found another job. I can't see many men taking that risk. But she did kill herself, Mr. Dalgliesh, whether she intended to or not. This case rests on two bits of evidence: Nurse Rainer's story about the rope,
and the suicide note. If Rainer convinces the jury, and the document examiner confirms that Mrs. Hewson wrote that note, then I'll be taking no bets on the verdict. In character or not, you can't get away from the evidence.”

But there was other evidence, thought Dalgliesh, less strong but not uninteresting. He said:

“She looked as if she were going somewhere, or perhaps expecting a visitor. She'd recently had a bath, her pores were clogged with powder. Her face was made up and she'd painted her nails. And she wasn't dressed for a solitary evening at home.”

“So her husband said. I thought myself that it looked as if she'd dolled herself up. That could support the theory of a faked suicide attempt. If you're planning to be the centre of attraction you may as well dress for the show. There's no evidence that she did have a visitor, although it's true enough that no one would have seen him in the mist. I doubt whether he could have found his way once he'd left the road. And if she was planning to leave Toynton, then someone would have had to fetch her. The Hewsons have no car, Mr. Anstey doesn't allow private transport; there's no bus today; and we've checked the car hire firms.”

“You've wasted no time.”

“A matter of a few telephone calls, Mr. Dalgliesh. I like to get these details out of the way while they're in my mind.”

“I can't see Maggie sitting quietly at home while the rest of them settled her future. She was friendly with a solicitor in Wareham, Robert Loder. I suppose he wasn't calling for her?”

Daniel shifted his heavy weight forward and threw another plank of driftwood on the fire. The fire was burning sluggishly as if the chimney were blocked with mist. He said:

“The local boy friend. You aren't the only one to suggest that, Mr. Dalgliesh. I thought it as well to ring the gentleman's home and have a word. Mr. Loder's in Poole General Hospital having his piles operated on. He was admitted yesterday and they gave him a week's notice. A nasty painful complaint. Hardly a comfortable time, you might say, to plan to run away with another man's wife.”

Dalgliesh asked:

“What about the one person at Toynton who did have his own car? Court?”

“It was an idea I had put to him, Mr. Dalgliesh. I got a definite reply if not a very gentlemanlike one. What it amounted to was that he'd do a great deal for dear Maggie but that self-preservation was the first law of nature and it just happens that his tastes don't run in that direction. Not that he was against the idea that she planned to leave Toynton. As a matter of fact, he suggested it, although I don't know how he thought it tied up with his previous view that Mrs. Hewson faked a suicide attempt. Both theories can't be true.”

Dalgliesh asked:

“What was it that he found in her bag, a contraceptive?”

“Ah, you noticed that, did you? Yes, her Dutch cap. She wasn't on the pill seemingly. Court tried to be tactful about it, but as I told him, you can't be tactful about violent death. That's the one social catastrophe that the etiquette books can't help with. It's the strongest indication that she might have been planning to leave, that and her passport. They were both in the bag. You could say she was equipped for any eventuality.”

Dalgliesh said:

“She was equipped with the two items which she couldn't
replace by a brief visit to the nearest chemist. I suppose you could argue that it's reasonable to keep the passport in her handbag. But the other?”

“Who's to know how long it was there. And women do keep things in odd places. No point in getting fanciful. And there's no reason to suppose that the two of them were set for a flit, she and Hewson. If you ask me he's as tied to Anstey and the Grange as any of the patients, poor devil. You know his story, I suppose?”

“Not really. I told you. I've taken good care not to become involved.”

“I had a sergeant like him once. The women couldn't leave him alone. It's that vulnerable, lost small boy look they have, I suppose. Name of Purkiss. Poor devil. He couldn't cope with the women and he couldn't cope without them. It did for his career. He runs a garage now, somewhere near Market Harborough, they tell me. And it's worse for Hewson. He doesn't even like his job. Forced into it, I gather, by one of those strong-minded mothers, a widow, determined to make her ewe lamb into a doctor. Appropriate enough, I suppose. It's the modern equivalent of the priesthood isn't it? He told me that the training wasn't so bad. He's got a phenomenal memory and can learn almost any facts. It's the responsibility he can't take. Well, there's not much of that at Toynton Grange. The patients are incurable and there's not much that they or anyone else expect him to do about it. Mr. Anstey wrote to him and took him on, I gather, after he'd had his name removed from the Register by the GMC. He'd been having an affair with a patient, a girl of sixteen. There was a suggestion that it had started a year or so earlier, but he was lucky. The girl stuck to her story. He couldn't write prescriptions for dangerous drugs at Toynton Grange or sign death certificates, of course. Not until they restored his name to the Register six months
ago. But they couldn't take away his medical knowledge and I've no doubt that Mr. Anstey found him useful.”

“And cheap.”

“Well, there's that, of course. And now he doesn't want to leave. I suppose he might have killed his wife to stop her nagging him to go, but personally I don't believe it and neither will a jury. He's the sort of man who gets a woman to do his dirty work.”

“Helen Rainer?”

“That'd be daft, wouldn't it, Mr. Dalgliesh? And where's the evidence?”

Dalgliesh wondered briefly whether to tell Daniel about the conversation between Maggie and her husband which he had overheard after the fire. But he put the thought from him. Hewson would either deny it or be able to explain it. There were probably a dozen petty secrets in a place like Toynton Grange. Daniel would feel bound to question him, of course. But he would see it as an irritating duty forced on him by an over suspicious and officious intruder from the Met. determined to twist plain facts into a tangle of complicated conjecture. And what possible difference could it make? Daniel was right. If Helen stuck to her story about seeing Maggie collect the rope; if the document examiner confirmed that Maggie had written the suicide note; then the case was closed. He knew now what the inquest verdict would be, just as he had known that the postmortem on Grace Willison would reveal nothing suspicious. Once again he saw himself, as if in a nightmare, watching impotently as the bizarre charabanc of facts and conjecture hurtled on its predestined course. He couldn't stop it because he had forgotten how. His illness seemed to have sapped his intelligence as well as his will.

The spar of driftwood, charred now into a blackened spear, jewelled with sparks, slowly toppled and died. Dalgliesh
was aware that the room was very cold and that he was hungry. Perhaps because of the occluding mist smudging the twilight hour between day and night, the evening seemed to have lasted for ever. He wondered whether he ought to offer Daniel a meal. Presumably the man could eat an omelette. But even the effort of cooking seemed beyond him.

Suddenly the problem solved itself. Daniel got slowly to his feet and reached for his coat. He said:

“Thank you for the whisky, Mr. Dalgliesh. And now I'd best be on my way. I'll see you at the inquest, of course. It'll mean your staying on here. But we'll get on with the case as quickly as we can.”

They shook hands. Dalgliesh almost winced at the grip. At the doorway Daniel paused, tugging on his coat.

“I saw Dr. Hewson alone in that small interviewing room which they tell me Father Baddeley used to use. And if you ask me, he'd have been better off with a priest. No difficulty in getting him to talk. Trouble was to stop him. And then he began crying and it all came out. How could he go on living without her? He'd never stopped loving her, longing for her. Funny, the more they're feeling, the less sincere they sound. But you'll have noticed that, of course. And then he looked up at me, his face blubbered with tears and said,

‘She didn't lie for me because she cared. It was only a game to her. She never pretended to love me. It was just that she thought the GMC committee were a set of pompous old bores who despised her and she wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me go to prison. And so she lied.'

“Do you know, Mr. Dalgliesh, it was only then that I realized that he wasn't speaking about his wife. He wasn't even thinking of her. Or of Nurse Rainer for that matter. Poor devil! Ah, well, it's an odd job we have, you and I.”

He shook hands again as if he had already forgotten that last crushing grip, and with a final keen-eyed survey of the sitting-room as if to reassure himself that everything was still in place, slipped out into the mist.

In the business room Dot Moxon stood with Anstey at the window and looked out of the curtain of misty darkness. She said bitterly:

“The Trust won't want either of us, you realize that? They may name the home after you, but they won't let you stay on as Warden, and they'll get rid of me.”

He laid his hand on her shoulder. She wondered how she could ever have longed for that touch or been comforted by it. He said with the controlled patience of a parent comforting a wilfully obtuse child:

“They've given me an undertaking. No one's job will be lost. And everyone will get a rise. From now on you'll all be paid National Health Service rates. And they have a contributory pension scheme, that's a big advantage. I've never been able to provide that.”

“And what about Albert Philby? You're not telling me that they've promised to keep Albert on, an established, respectable national charity like the Ridgewell Trust.”

“Philby does present a problem. But he'll be dealt with sympathetically.”

“Dealt with sympathetically! We all know what that means. That's what they said to me in my last job, before they forced me out! And this is his home! He trusts us. We've taught him to trust us! And we have a responsibility for him.”

“Not any longer, Dot.”

“So we betray Albert and exchange what you've tried to build up here for Health Service rates of pay and a pension scheme! And my position? Oh, they won't sack me, I know that. But it won't be the same. They'll make Helen matron. She knows that too. Why else did she vote for the take-over?”

He said quietly:

“Because she knew that Maggie was dead.” Dot laughed bitterly: “It's worked out very nicely for her hasn't it? For both of them.”

He said:

“Dot dear, you and I have to accept that we cannot always choose the way in which we are called to serve.”

She wondered how she had never noticed it before, that irritating note of unctuous reproof in his voice. She turned abruptly away. The hand, thus rejected, slipped heavily from her shoulders. She remembered suddenly what he reminded her of: the sugar Father Christmas on her first Christmas tree, so desirable, so passionately desired. And you bit into nothingness; a trace of sweetness on the tongue and then an empty cavity grained with white sand.

Ursula Hollis and Jennie Pegram sat together in Jennie's room, the two wheelchairs side by side in front of the dressing table. Ursula was leaning across and brushing Jennie's hair. She wasn't sure how she came to be here, so oddly employed. Jennie had never asked her before. But tonight, waiting for Helen to put them to bed, Helen, who had never before been so late, it was comforting not to be alone with her thoughts, comforting even to watch the
corn gold hair rise with each brush stroke, to fall slowly, a delicate shining mist, over the hunched shoulders. The two women found themselves whispering, cosily, like conspiring schoolgirls. Ursula said:

“What do you think will happen now?”

“To Toynton Grange? The Trust will take over and Wilfred will go, I expect. I don't mind. At least there'll be more patients. It's boring here now with so few of us. And Wilfred told me that they plan to build a sun-lounge out on the cliff. I'll like that. And we're bound to get more treats, trips and so on. We haven't had many recently. As a matter of fact, I was thinking of leaving. They keep writing from my old hospital wanting me back.”

Ursula knew that they hadn't written. But it didn't matter. She contributed her own morsel of fantasy.

“So was I. Steve is keen for me to move nearer London so that he can visit. Just until he's found us a more suitable flat of course.”

“Well, the Ridgewell Trust have a home in London haven't they? You could be transferred there.”

How strange that Helen hadn't told her that! Ursula whispered:

“It's odd that Helen voted for the takeover. I thought she wanted Wilfred to sell out.”

“Probably she did until she knew that Maggie was dead. Now that she's got rid of Maggie, I suppose she feels she may as well stay on. I mean the field's clear now, isn't it?”

Got rid of Maggie. But surely no one had got rid of Maggie but Maggie herself? And Helen couldn't have known that Maggie was going to die. Only six days ago she had been urging Ursula to vote for the sell out. She couldn't have known then. Even at the preliminary family council, before they all parted for their meditation hour, she had
made it plain where her interests lay. And then during that meditation hour, she had changed her mind. No, Helen couldn't have known that Maggie was going to die. Ursula found the thought comforting. Everything was going to be all right. She had told Inspector Daniel about the hooded figure she had seen on the night of Grace's death, not the whole truth, of course, but enough to lift a weight of nagging and irrational worry from her mind. He hadn't thought it important. She had sensed that from the way he had listened, his few brief questions. And he was right, of course. It wasn't important. She wondered now how she could ever have lain awake fretted by inexplicable anxieties, haunted by images of evil and death, cloaked and hooded, stalking the silent corridors. And it must have been Maggie. With the news of Maggie's death she had suddenly become sure of it. It was difficult to know why, except that the figure had looked at once theatrical and surreptitious, so much a stranger, wearing the monk's robe with none of the slovenly familiarity of the Toynton Grange staff. But she had told the Inspector about it. There was no need to worry any more. Everything was going to be all right. Toynton Grange wouldn't close down after all. But it didn't matter. She would get a transfer to the London home, perhaps on exchange. Someone there was sure to want to come to the seaside. She heard Jennie's high childish voice.